


Limbo

by Helholden



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 14:53:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4670843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helholden/pseuds/Helholden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the halfway mark where a decision must be made, and the ties that bind are melting away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Limbo

**Author's Note:**

> A quick piece, un-betaed and written at once, as something to suit my angst. A toast to the death of things.

_* * *_

 

She feels the hand on her forehead, gently wiping over the sweat that has pooled there. Tilting her chin in an attempt to look upward, she searches the dark for a face to belong to the hand. There is no fear, even though there should be.

 

“Relax, Lydia,” he says, a familiar voice of suede on velvet, scratchy from disuse or too much screaming. “You’ll be out of here soon.”

 

“Peter?” she asks, feeling tired. Exhausted. Doubting the voice. He wouldn’t be in her cell, after all. Even he doesn’t have those kinds of powers.

 

“Lydia, I’m hurt,” he drawls, pulling his hand away from her forehead. It’s cold now. No longer warm. “And here I thought we had something special between us. _Hmph_.”

 

Lydia lolls her head to the side, queasiness rising in her stomach. Blurring her vision.

 

“You’re not here . . . ”

 

“Of course I’m not,” Peter clarifies, coughing as if to clear his throat. To make his own voice sound clearer and not so rough. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not nearby.”

 

Lydia narrows her eyes, rolling her head towards his direction again. If he were real, he’d be sitting by her bed. He sort of is, crouched next to her on the floor. “ . . . How?” she manages to ask.

 

“Here?” he asks. “How am I here?” Peter shrugs his shoulders, but he knows the answer. “It’s a good question. I think something is amplifying our powers, and I think you know what it is. Your little boyfriend,” he adds, and Lydia hears a strange twinge of sentiment in the title, “has been unwittingly burning bodies on it, hasn’t he? Trying to cover up the supernatural? I heard them talking about it. It’s a sacrificial alter, Lydia, and it’s giving us all powers beyond what’s normal. Making us all stronger. Fortunately, that seems to work in favor of our previous bond as well.”

 

“ . . . Is that how I was able to . . . to push the guards away with . . . with my screams?”

 

Peter leans in closer, just slightly over her. “Precisely,” he says. Lydia feels a ghost of warm breath, even though he isn’t there.

 

“How do I get out?” she asks, licking her chapped lips. The flakes are scratching her as she talks.

 

Peter leans away, letting out a sigh. “We, you mean,” he informs her. There is a moment of silence. “I’m coming with you. If you think I’m staying in here, you’re sorely mistaken.”

 

Lydia squeezes her eyes shut tight, fighting off more nausea. “Fine,” she agrees, feeling some of her strength returning to her. Anything to get out. She had to get out. She had to warn her friends. “What do _we_ do?”

 

“Leave that to me,” Peter says, his voice fading away until she looks around the room and notices she’s alone again. Lydia strains against the straps, but they won’t break. She doesn’t have the strength to make them snap, so she sags against the cot again and stares up at the ceiling.

 

Peter Hale, her savior. A second time.

 

It tastes bitter on the back of her tongue.

 

-

 

When he comes for her to the tune of a fire drill ringing in her ears, Lydia is hardly surprised when he slashes the straps binding her with his claws and she instantly heads for the door and right towards a guard heading their way.

 

Lydia fights him and screams with all her might, pushing him and causing the man to fly ten feet away from them until he crashes into a wall. Peter snags her arm in the aftermath and drags her in the opposite way. “We’re sneaking out the _back_ door,” he says. “Less guards that way.”

 

It doesn’t take long before she rushes out under a cloudy night sky, breathing in chilled air from above.

 

The moment doesn’t last long. Peter snatches her arm again. “We’re not quite out _yet_ ,” he reminds her, the sounds of guards close behind them, and so, Lydia runs with him. Into the night and into the forest, they run until they’re halfway back to the city limits of Beacon Hills and out of breath, though Lydia gasps far more than him.

 

“Ah,” Peter says, seeing the sign. “Here we part ways.”

 

Lydia turns to him, disbelief in her eyes as she gasps for breath. “That’s it?” She breathes. “We break out—of Eichen House—and now you’re leaving?”

 

“Why not?” he asks flippantly, taking two steps towards her. He holds out his arms. “Give me one good reason why I should stay that doesn’t involve helping your friends get out of trouble that they’ve brought upon themselves?”

 

Lydia heaves out an exhale. “I don’t know,” she says weakly, shrugging. There is a sense of defeat hanging in the air, and she doesn’t know what for.

 

Peter smiles, but it’s not in a way that reaches his eyes. “Ah, just the way I want it,” he says, but there’s a bitterness in his eyes like a glinting shard. “Freedom to do as I please.” He tips his head. “Goodbye, Lydia.”

 

He goes to turn away.

 

“Wait—”

 

Peter spins around. “Wait for what?” he demands, and his question disarms her. She is tongue-tied enough to be rendered silent, so he forges on. “Wait for you to change your mind? For the possibility of something that’s likely never going to happen? To ride this one out, see where it goes, and on the off chance that it utterly fails, maybe?” He steps closer to her, but the chill only grows colder. “I can read every thought you’re having right now, and do you really think any of that is going to work?”

 

When she doesn’t answer, he then laughs, a clear bitter ringing in her ears.

 

“No,” Peter says, shaking his head. “He wasn’t the first one,” he adds. It comes out more somber than before, their connection severing as he says it. The mental link cracking, and then there’s a snap in her brain—and it’s gone, leaving Lydia in shock. “And he won’t be the last.”

 

She watches him walk away and lets him as the sky opens up and a soft rainfall begins to trickle against her scalp and shoulders, cold water, freezing her with its touch.

 

She stands there as the rain pours down and washes everything away.

 

 


End file.
